Sheep Among Wolves, and the Town That Knew Him

He kept moving. He went all round the towns and the villages, teaching in the meeting houses, telling people the good news of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of illness. And when he looked out at the crowds he was sorry for them, right down inside himself, because they were worn out and knocked about, like sheep with nobody at all to look after them. And he said to his followers, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So beg the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.”

And then he did something about the workers himself. He called the twelve to him and handed them the same authority they had watched him using all year: to drive out unclean spirits, and to heal every disease and every illness. Simon, the one he called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James and John, the sons of Zebedee; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean; and Judas Iscariot, the one who in the end handed him over. He sent them out two by two, and this is what he told them before they went.

“Do not go off down a road into the other nations, and do not go into a Samaritan town. Go instead to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go, say it out loud: the kingdom of the heavens has come near. Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Make the ones with leprosy clean. Drive out demons. You were given all of it for nothing; give it for nothing.

Do not take gold, or silver, or any small change in your belts. No bag for the road. No second shirt. A workman has a right to his food. When you come into a town or a village, find out who in it will have you, and stay in that house until you leave. And when you go in, say peace to the house. If the house is worth it, let your peace come and settle on it; and if it is not, let your peace come back to you. And if anybody will not have you and will not listen to a word you say, then walk out of that house, or out of that town, and shake its dust off your feet. I tell you the truth: it will go easier for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judging than for that town.”

They had watched him do every bit of that. Now they were to do it themselves, with nothing in their hands and nothing in their belts, in villages where nobody had ever heard of them.

And then he told them what he was sending them into, and he did not soften it. “Look — I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. So be as wise as snakes, and as harmless as doves. Watch out for people. They will hand you over to the courts, and they will beat you in their meeting houses. You will be dragged in front of governors and kings because of me — and that will be your chance to tell them, and to tell the nations too. And when they hand you over, do not lie awake working out what to say or how to say it. What you are to say will be given to you when the hour comes. It will not be you doing the talking. It will be the Spirit of your Father, talking in you.

Brother will hand over brother to be killed, and a father will hand over his child, and children will stand up against their parents and have them put to death. And everybody will hate you because of my name — but the one who holds on to the end will be saved. When they hunt you out of one town, go on to the next one. I tell you the truth: you will not have got round the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. A learner is not above his teacher, and a servant is not above his master. It is enough for the learner to end up like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, what will they call the rest of his household?”

Beelzebul was a name for the ruler of the demons, and it was about the worst thing anybody could call a man. They were going to find out before long exactly what he meant.

Then he told them not to be afraid, and he told them three times over. “So do not be frightened of them. There is nothing covered up that is not going to be uncovered, and nothing hidden that is not going to be known. What I tell you in the dark, say out in the daylight; and what you hear whispered in your ear, shout off the roofs of the houses. And do not be afraid of the ones who can kill your body and after that cannot do one single thing more. Be afraid instead of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.

Two sparrows are sold for a penny, are they not? And not one of them falls to the ground without your Father. And the hairs on your head have all been counted. So do not be afraid. You are worth more than a great many sparrows.”

A sparrow was the cheapest thing on the market stall. You could buy two of them for a coin a working man would not trouble to bend down and pick up, and nobody in the world counted sparrows. God counts sparrows, he said. And he has counted the hairs on your head.

“So everybody who stands up in front of other people and says he belongs to me — I will say he belongs to me, in front of my Father in the heavens. And whoever says in front of other people that he does not know me, I will say the same thing about him in front of my Father in the heavens.”

And then he said the hardest thing he had said yet, and he said it to twelve men who all had families waiting for them at home. “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a young wife against her husband’s mother. A man’s enemies will be the people in his own house.

Whoever loves his father or his mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves his son or his daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not pick up his own cross and walk along behind me is not worthy of me. The one who holds on to his life will lose it, and the one who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

And then, right at the end of it, he turned the whole thing round and made it small again, and easy, and possible for anybody. “Whoever takes you in takes me in, and whoever takes me in takes in the one who sent me. Whoever takes in a prophet because he is a prophet will get a prophet’s reward, and whoever takes in a good man because he is a good man will get a good man’s reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones so much as a cup of cold water, because that little one belongs to me — I tell you the truth, he will not lose his reward.”

A cup of cold water. After the wolves and the courts and the sword, that is where he stopped: the smallest kind thing one person can hand to another, and he said it would not be lost.

So they went out, two by two, and they did it. They told people to change their minds. They drove out demons. They poured oil on sick people and healed them. And afterwards they came back and told him every bit of it.

He came into a house after that, and the crowd came together again — so many of them jammed into the yard and the doorway that he and his friends could not even get a meal eaten. And the news of it traveled home, along with everything else people were saying about him. What people were saying was this: “He is out of his mind.” So his own mother and his brothers set out to come and get him, to take hold of him and take him home where he would be safe.

And standing in that same crowd were some teachers of the law who had come all the way down from Jerusalem on purpose, and they were saying something worse. “He has Beelzebul in him. It is by the ruler of the demons that he drives the demons out.”

So he called them over to him — he would not answer it behind their backs — and he answered them in pictures, so that everybody standing there could follow it. “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is split in two and fighting itself, that kingdom cannot stand up. If a household is split in two and fighting itself, that household will not be able to stand up either. And if Satan has turned on himself and is split in two, he cannot stand up. That is the end of him.

And if I am driving out demons by Beelzebul, then who is it your own sons drive them out by? Ask them. But if I am driving out the demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. And nobody can walk into a strong man’s house and carry off his things — not unless he ties the strong man up first. Then he can rob the house.

The one who is not with me is against me, and the one who does not gather with me scatters. And when an unclean spirit goes out of a person, it goes wandering about through dry places looking for somewhere to rest, and finds nowhere. Then it says, ‘I will go back to my house, the one I came out of.’ And it comes and finds the house swept out and tidied up and everything in order. Then off it goes and fetches seven other spirits worse than itself, and in they all come and settle down there. And that person ends up worse off at the finish than he was at the start.

I tell you the truth: people will be forgiven everything — every sin, and every foul thing they say, however much of it there is. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit is not forgiven, ever; he is guilty of a wrong that does not go away.” He said that because of what they had just said about him: that he had an unclean spirit in him.

While he was saying all that, a woman somewhere in the crowd could not keep quiet any longer, and shouted out over everybody’s heads, “Blessed is the mother who carried you and fed you!” And he said, “Blessed, rather, are the ones who hear the word of God and hold on to it.”

And it was about then that his mother and his brothers arrived. They could not get near him for the crowd, so they stood outside and sent a message in, and it went from mouth to mouth over people’s heads until it reached the ones sitting closest to him. “Look — your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.” And he said, “Who is my mother? And who are my brothers?”

And he looked round at the people sitting on the floor in a ring all about him, and said, “Look — my mother and my brothers! Whoever does what God wants: that one is my brother, and my sister, and my mother.”

His mother was still with him at the very end. He was not putting his family out. He was pulling a roomful of ordinary people in.

Some time after that he went back to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and his followers went with him. On the Sabbath he stood up to teach in the meeting house, and the people who had known him since he was small sat and listened with their mouths open — and then began to be annoyed. “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom he has been given, and these acts of power his hands are doing? Is this not the carpenter? Is this not Mary’s son, the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And his sisters — are they not all here with us?”

They knew his mother. They had bought doors and yokes and roof beams off him, and argued with him about the price. And that was the whole trouble. And he said, “A prophet is made much of everywhere except in his own home town, and among his own relatives, and in his own house.”

And he could not do one work of power there. He laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them, and that was all of it. And he was amazed at how little they trusted him. Then he went off round the villages instead, teaching as he went. He had told the twelve that a learner ends up being treated the way his teacher is treated. They had just watched what that looked like, in the town where he was brought up.